As part of a newly funded NASA Quantum Pathways Institute consisting of a multi-university research team, UC Santa Barbara professor of electrical and computer engineering Daniel Blumenthal will help to build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space.
“We are peering into a universe that we’ve never peered into before,” he said.
Led by colleagues at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Blumenthal and the other researchers will focus on quantum sensing, which involves observing how atoms react to small changes in their environment, using it to infer the time-variations in the gravity field of the Earth. This will enable scientists to improve accuracy in measurements of several important climate processes, such as sea level rise, rate of ice melt, changes in land water resources and ocean heat storage changes.
The Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina, as seen from the International Space Station on Feb 21, 2012. Photograph courtesy of NASA